The Soviet Union Disintegrates

In various republics the Soviet Union's economy was not an argument for
staying in the Union. There was talk of breaking away from Russia and of their republic organizing economically better than
could bureaucrats in Moscow. Also, nationalism was alive
within the republics. There was some
hostility for Russians who had moved in and tended to be
opposed to breaking away from Moscow. Like them, Gorbachev wanted to keep the Soviet Union together.
Elections in Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania in 1990, however, gave overwhelming victories to political
parties favoring independence. A nationalistic desire for separation also appeared within the largest of the republics – Russia.

In the Russian republic's parliament, Boris Yeltsin was president. He had
been dismissed from the Party's presidium by Gorbachev
and others in 1987. Yeltsin was described by Sakharov as a man he liked
but of a "different caliber" than Gorbachev – different suggesting lesser. He lacked Gorbachev's grace, but the common Russian tended to like him. Yeltsin criticized the policies of Gorbachev, and he denounced the party that had demoted him. It is said that Yeltsin owed at least
some of his popularity to Gorbachev's unpopularity.

Perhaps it can be said that Yeltsin was following a grudge. In July, 1990, Yeltsin convened Russia's parliament and called for economic sovereignty for
the republic, in other words, taking control of the economy
away from Gorbachev. Other republics wished to follow suit.
The Ukraine called for the return of all Ukrainian soldiers
from the Soviet military and the creation of an independent
Ukrainian military. In the new atmosphere of freedom and
democracy, the Soviet Union was unraveling.

The Soviet Union's Communist Party was split between reformers and conservatives, and both
were critical of Gorbachev, who was trying to steer a middle ground between
state control of the economy and free enterprise. Gorbachev spoke of his belief
in socialism and of his being a Communist. He was holding to Lenin's New Economic
Policy of the early 1920s as his model for what should be done. note27

To many in Russia, Gorbachev seemed weak and unable to make up his mind.
One moment Gorbachev was praising a conservative Communist such as Yegor Ligachev,
and another moment he was praising the liberal Party ideologue Alexander Yakovlev. People were wondering
whether he knew where he stood.

In 1991 Gorbachev's popularity in the Western world was at an all-time high, but his
approval rating in the Soviet Union was at an all-time low – not only because
of the economy but also because of the fall of Communism in the satellite countries.
Many in the Soviet Union were angry with Gorbachev for having allowed Germany
to unite again. Some, including conservative and patriotic Communists, saw Gorbachev
as having disarmed the Soviet Union. Among the Russians was the simplification that was common among peoples across the world. They saw him as having thrown away the
victory in World War II that had cost twenty million lives.

In 1991 more Soviet factories were closing down. The parliament in the Russian
Republic passed a few reforms in the direction of a market economy, and Yeltsin
cut funding to various Soviet agencies based on Russian soil. Gorbachev was
being destroyed by the new freedoms he had helped to create. He saw the power
of the Soviet government as falling away, and he turned his strategy in the
direction of preservation – what some would call a turn to the right. Gorbachev's
al foreign minister, Shevardnadze, resigned. Shevardnadze warned that "a dictatorship
is coming." Gorbachev suggested to the conservatives
around him, including the leader of the Soviet Union's military, that they were
free to take whatever extraordinary action was necessary to preserve the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In August they obliged him. They made their move while Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, were
vacationing in the Crimea. The leaders of what some call a coup claimed that Gorbachev was ill.
Gorbachev played along. He was, it appeared, under house arrest, but he had
a telephone with which he could call anyone he wished.

The coup was a shock to Russians, who saw their nation as something different
from what they thought was a Latin American banana republic, and many of them
went into the streets to protest. They called for the protection of democracy. Yeltsin
stood with people who were in the streets. Ideologically "the
masses" were much respected in the Soviet Union, and military men were easily persuaded
to side with Yeltsin and the people in the streets. So-called coup leaders did not believe
in their coup to the extent that they would commit themselves to a military takeover.
Gorbachev's turn to the right and the coup were colossal failures. Gorbachev
pretended to be liberated, and Yeltsin was more of a hero overshadowing the
hapless Gorbachev. (See book review on Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders.)
In triumph, Yeltsin by presidential decree banned the Communist Party in the
Russian Republic and seized all its property.

At the end of the year, 1991, the other former Soviet Republics followed the Russian
Republic into independence. Abroad, all Soviet embassies and consulates became
Russian embassies and consulates. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist as a
legal entity, and Gorbachev was now out of a job, and bitter, blaming Yeltsin
for breaking up his beloved Soviet Union.

Relaxed tensions between
the Soviet Union and the capitalist West had paid off for the West.
Those who had equated bargaining with the Soviet
Union and "peaceful coexistence" with appeasing Hitler at Munich had been proven wrong. The Soviet Union fell apart
not at a height in belligerence by the United
States but when relations were good. Communism was still around, but it had
declined dramatically.